The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith recently published a Vademecum to guide the ecclesiastical investigation and adjudication of cases of sexual abuse of minors committed by Catholic clergy. By collecting existing regulations, the Vademecum provides some remarkable insights into how the congregation operates its penal trials. The document inter alia discloses that the congregation operates with three verdicts in penal trials, ‘constat’, ‘non constat’, and ‘constat de non’, which roughly correlate with the verdicts ‘guilty’, ‘not proven’, and ‘not guilty’ of Scottish law. It is particularly this differentiation of two acquittals, with the same legal effects but different implications, which fundamentally impacts how the congregation decides penal cases. I will shed more light on this issue by introducing the regular canonical verdict system and the congregation’s innovation, by comparing it with secular two- and three-verdict systems, and by discussing my findings to discover the merits and demerits of three verdicts.

中文翻译：

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有罪、无罪与存疑：对信理部性侵案件三审制度的思考

信理部最近出版了一本 Vademecum，以指导教会对天主教神职人员对未成年人的性虐待案件进行调查和裁决。通过收集现有法规，Vademecum 提供了一些关于会众如何进行刑事审判的非凡见解。该文件除其他外披露，会众在刑事审判中的三个判决，“constat”、“non constat”和“constat de non”，与“有罪”、“未证实”和“未证实”的判决大致相关犯了苏格兰法律。尤其是两种无罪判决的区别，具有相同的法律效力但不同的含义，从根本上影响了会众如何决定刑事案件。